Type 1 diabetics must periodically be administered with insulin to sustain their physiological conditions. Typically, these patients administer doses of either fast acting or slow acting insulin using needle type syringes, for example, prior to meals, and/or at a suitable time during the course of each day contemporaneously with the blood glucose level testing using fingerstick testing, for example. If insulin is not suitably administered, the diabetic patients risk serious if not fatal damage to the body.
Continued development and improvement in the external infusion pump therapy in recent years have drawn much appeal to the diabetic patients for, among others, improved management of diabetes by better regulating and controlling the intake of insulin. Typically, the patient inserts a cannula which is connected to as infusion tubing attached to an external pump, and insulin is administered based on a preprogrammed basal profiles. Moreover, the external infusion devices presently available include computational capability to determined suitable bolus doses such as carbohydrate bolus and correction bolus, for example, to be administered in conjunction with the infusion device executing the patient's basal profile.
The basal profiles are generally determined by the patient's physician or caretaker and are based on a number of factors including the patient's insulin sensitivity and physiological condition, which are diagnosed by the patient's physician, for example, and are typically intended to as accurately estimate the patient's glucose levels over a predetermined time period during which the patient is infusing insulin. The glucose levels may be estimated based on the patient's periodic discrete testing using a test strip and a blood glucose meter such as Freestyle® Glucose Meter available from Abbott Diabetes Care Inc., of Alameda, Calif. Such estimations are, however, prone to error, and do not accurately mirror the patient's actual physiological condition.
Furthermore, each aspect of the infusion and the analyte monitoring require components that are configured to execute the associated functions related to, for example, the control and management of insulin delivery and analyte monitoring. In addition, these components are prone to failure or otherwise periodic replacement due to ordinary usage. In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to have a modular system including medication delivery unit such as an insulin pump, and an analyte monitoring device such as a continuous glucose monitoring system, that would allow for component based replacement when one or more aspects of the overall therapy management system fails or requires replacement.